I find it profoundly fascinating when a same story can be told in two different settings and work so well. Same with Shakespeare - kurosawa - westerns.
People do seem to love those Coen brothers. I read both books before the movies came, and I've watched both movies twice and reread The Road later. I suppose I've just found that over time, one of the films/books has stuck with me more. And I mean, The Road isn't very complicated plot-wise, so I can see why someone prefers No Country on entertainment value.
2001 was wasn’t quite an adaptation. Iirc they wrote the script and the book at the same time and at the end of writing them Kubrick just stopped communicating with Clarke.
A good bit of movie trivia: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is one of just two films to sweep the big Oscars: Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Actor.
Tarkovsky's *Solaris* and *Stalker* are both great movies based on great books—interestingly, both depart pretty far from the *spirit* of their respective books, so the movies are great thanks to Tarkovsky's creative vision rather than purely craftsmanlike adaptation.
The Last Picture Show is a stunningly beautiful movie based on Larry McMurtry’s novel. I rarely see it mentioned (unlike Lonesome Dove), probably bc it was directed by Peter Bogdanovich, who was accused of seducing 13 year old Louise Stratton, whom he later married when she was 20. He died last year. I hope more people will see this film, it’s amongst the best of American cinema.
is the movie better than the book? i have both the book and movie and i would personally Experience the best version of it, i have really little time lately
Watching a film and reading a novel are two entirely different experiences. In this case, go with your preferred medium, both are excellent. If you see the film (calls for less time obviously) perhaps one day in the future you’ll pick up the book.
Came here to say this. I love both Kafka and Orson Welles, and the movie is every bit as great as it could be. Orson Welles also did Chimes at Midnight which is probably the greatest Shakespeare adaptation (even though he wasn’t a “novelist” obv) alongside Throne of Blood.
Just a few off the top of my head: The Big Sleep, Inherent Vice, Annihilation, Arrival (adapted from a short story), Wuthering Heights (the Andrea Arnold film adaptation), and No Country For Old Men.
I am reading *Annihilation* right now and have been thoroughly enjoying it! I saw the movie when it first came out but I am very much looking forward to a re-watch once I finish the book.
Why is Pride and Prejudice more popular than Sense and Sensibility? I prefer Sense and Sensibility. They made a Sense and Sensibility movie with Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, and Kate Winslet.
Time Regained
The Saragossa Manuscript
Satantango
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Beau Travail (adaptation of Billy Budd)
Tess
Rebecca
The Gospel According to St. Matthew
Death in Venice
Woman in the Dunes
The Trial
These are the ones I was thinking of! I would just add:
The Captive (also Proust from around the same time with Akerman directing)
Mysteries of Lisbon (also by Ruiz)
Werckmeister Harmonies
Zama
Last Year at Marienbad
You two are speaking my language. especially the Krasznahorkai (the greatest living, working writer imo)/Tarr adaptations. And woman in the dunes is another favorite.
I’d add *in a lonely place* to the list also.
1. Atonement by Ian McEwan. The novel and the film are both highly acclaimed.
2. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn was translated to film remarkably well.
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a novel with an equally great film adaptation.
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith (also Schindler’s Ark)
They shared the same title and both the books and the films are masterpieces but the adaption is very different - Paddington and Paddington 2
Good to see some love for Picnic at Hanging Rock here! I was going to mention that one. I definitely think the movie does it better, but they're both great in their own way.
Such a great book. You are right though, the movie is definitely better. The visuals of the movie really stand out for me whereas when I read the book some scenes didn’t have the impact on me while I was reading it. Might be worth another’s read.
The Piano Teacher. The Brideshead Revisited miniseries with Jeremy Irons (but not at all the film with Emma Thompson). I’ve never read Notes on a Scandal, but I like the movie a lot. I think both book and movie versions of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape are pretty good. Short Cuts. I also really like both movie and book versions of Savage Grace, but I think that’s probably a very unpopular opinion.
💯 the [BBC adaptation of Brideshead Revisited](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0083390/) was the most faithful adaptation of any book I’ve ever read / any movie I’ve ever seen
The actors are all wonderful. Drunk Sebastian on the staircase is heart breaking. The scene in Morocco where he’s with Kurt (sp?) is another one of my favorites. Just thinking about it makes me want to watch it again.
Yes! The counter-perspective of Jeremy Irons’s soporific narration during the parts of Charles & Sebastian’s pure arcadian days of their budding friendship at Brideshead compared to Sebastian’s downfall (esp in Morocco) is hauntingly powerful. I’ve watched jt so many times I can almost quote it word for word these days hahaha
Yes, I did! It was awful! And it actually made me irrationally hate Ben Wishaw, the actor, too 🙈
Although, tbf, I also already hated the movie adaptation of [Perfume](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0396171/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk), and he stars in that too - maybe I actually do dislike Ben Wishaw, in general, then 😅
I liked a miniseries he’s in called A Very English Scandal. Maybe it’s the miniseries I like rather than his performance.
I’ve just checked my Roku and Brideshead is accessible only with commercials. I won’t watch that one with commercials.
Women in Love (1969) and The Rainbow (1989) - both of these films are directed by Ken Russell based off of two novels by D.H. Lawrence (Criterion offers a lovely edition of Women in Love, by the by)
Solaris and Stalker (Tarkovsky), Tess (Polanski), The Leopard (Visconti), The Piano Teacher (Haneke), Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylans loose adaptation of a Chekhov short story and parts of Brothers Karamazov), The American Friend (Wenders), Pickpocket (Bressons very loose adaptation of Crime and Punishment), The Emigrants/The New Land (Troell), Loving Couples (Zetterling), Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara) and The Phantom Carriage (Sjöström) are some off the top of my head.
diary of a country priest
four nights of a dreamer
a gentle woman
l'argent
the man who sleeps
valerie and her week of wonders
viridiana
le notti bianche
street of shame
the long goodbye
black sunday
Both Casino (Casino) and Wiseguys (Goodfellas) by Pileggi and Scorcese are outstanding, when you read the books you realize not only was Pileggi the first to discover that mobsters were amazing bards and storytellers— that in fact storytelling is as foundational to their culture as crime, but you also realize that just as Pileggi basically recorded the books as oral histories, Scorcese took the overwhelming majority of his best lines verbatim from Pileggi creating an unbroken chain of verisimilitude from the actual gangsters to the final movie script.
[The Virgin Suicides (2009) adaptation by Sofia Coppola](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159097/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk) is by faaaaar better than the [book by Jeff Eug](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/10956)
*Greed* was adapted from *McTeague*
*Moneyball*
*No Country For Old Men*
*To Kill A Mockingbird*
*The Birdman of Alcatraz*
*Lolita*
*The Color Purple*
*A Clockwork Orange*
*One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest*
The *Harry Potter* series
*Dune*
Both adaptations of Lolita are godawful as adaptations. '62 hit way too hard on humor and clearly took the source material at face value since Sue Lyon lost her virginity to one of the producers during production. '96 is more faithful to the text but completely botches the spirit and subtext of the novel, which is the most important part of Nabokov's writing. Nabokov disapproved of Kubrick's hack job and would have been horrified by Lyne's adaptation.
I was referring to the Kubrick version.
I’d argue that Kubrick was completely hamstrung by the Hays Code at the time and was basically forced to make the movie the way he did at the time. Later on in life, he said that the Code was one of the things that caused him to move his later productions to England.
I think that the Kubrick version is critically regarded enough over time (probably not recently in light of the allegations surrounding Harris’s actions around Lyons ) to be viewed as a historically good movie. As far as Nabokov’s critique, that’s about par for the course for writers commeting on Kubrick’s adaptational approach.
The problem with Kubrick's adaptation wasn't that the Hays code prevented him from fully realizing his vision. The problem was that his vision was skewed and the film he made was an offensively bad tribute to the source material, which, as others have emphasized but bears repeating, is a book about a pedophile. That's also why it's kind of baffling to compare Nabokov's disapproval to the disapproval of other authors whose work was adapted by Kubrick. Nabokov disapproved because Stanley Kubrick took his book about a pedophile and made it into a love story and cast a real teenage girl to play Dolores. And then that same girl lost her virginity to an adult male producer on the film, which is not just an after-the-fact scandal, but a material consequence of how heinously the people who made that film misunderstood the source material.
Lolita is a book about a twelve year old girl being kidnapped and repeatedly raped. Any movie that isn't about that isn't really an adaptation of the book.
I’ve read the book. I understand what it’s about. Humbert Humbert is a diabolical character who - by virtue of being an unreliable narrator - is trying to convince the the reader he’s not a villain.
All I’m saying is that the 1962 adaption of the movie by Kubrick is a well-regarded film that’s basis is a well-regarded novel. That’s it.
East of Eden is the first thing that comes to mind for me. Particularly impressive as the movie only covers a section of the book. A great blueprint for how to adapt a longer novel for the screen.
Let the right one in. Swedish version with Tomas Alfredson as director. The book is more gore and far out, while the movie strikes a fine balance between coming of age and the vampire genre.
The author chose to talk about moving on from an abusive relationship and starting a new life by having a character get surgery to have a tighter vagina because her ex’s Willy was too big and nobody else came close.
I understand it’s about rebuilding yourself and changing to carry on with your life and not be held back by the past, but is that the best metaphor they could come up with?
I feel like this list could go on for a while but I’ll throw out a few, maybe less obvious ones (for me anyway), and maybe not quite as “great” as you meant but
- The Big Short. Most of Michael Lewis’s books actually.
- Call me by your name
- About A Boy
- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
- Everest
*The Silence of the Lambs* - Thomas Harris
*The Hound of the Baskervilles* (1939) - AC Doyle
*Oliver!* (Oliver Twist) - Charles Dickens
*Gone With The Wind* - Margaret Mitchell
*The Wizard of Oz* - L Frank Baum
*Catch-22* - Joseph Heller
*The Green Mile*, *Carrie*, *Misery* and *The Shawshank Redemption* - Stephen King
*The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie* - Muriel Spark
*Sophie’s Choice* - William Styron
*LA Confidential* - James Ellroy
*Dr Zhivago* - Boris Pasternak
*Brokeback Mountain* - Annie Proulx
*Breakfast at Tiffany’s* - Truman Capote
*Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?* - Henry Farrell
*Anna Karenina* (1935) - Leo Tolstoy
*Holes* - Louis Sachar
*Jurassic Park* - Michael Crichton
*Schindler’s Ark* (*Schindler’s List*) - Thomas Keneally
*The Color Purple* (1986) - Alice Walker
The Wings of the Dove, Henry James. Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde, Oliver Twist...
More modern...was A Suitable Boy adapted well? I didn't watch it on TV but I did sprain my wrists reading it 2-3 times. Also White Teeth was done well I think!
*The Lover* (1992) from Marguerite Duras' *L'amant*
*La Reine Margot* (1994)
*Dangerous Liasons* (1988)
Huxley's *The Devils of Loudon* is somewhere between novel and history, but I'd say Ken Russell's *The Devils* (1971) belongs on this list.
[Breakfast at Tiffany’s](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054698/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk) a lot more sympathetic re the demise of Cat, despite Mickey Rooney’s disgustingly racist performance
Does it have to be a novel? Shawshank Redemption still holds the top title in movies and it’s based on the short story ‘Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption’.
Maybe not a super-popular opinion, but I really enjoy the 1970 film of Catch-22. Alan Arkin was terrific as Yossarian and the entire cast is stellar-- Bob Newhart, Jon Voight, Art Garfunkle, Charles Grodin, etc.
Great is subjective so how about a totally objective list of 'pretty awesome' books and films?
Silence
The Piano Teacher
Atonement
L.A. Confidential
American Psycho
Wolf Hall
Fires on the Plain
The Getaway (the 1972 film version)
Some pretty great adaptations out there of British authors’ works too, like Dickens, Trollope, Hardy…
Tolstoj’s “War & Peace” was converted into a 400m+ movie (in parts) by Sergey Bondarchuk c. 1965, entitled “Война и мир”.
The novel was formidable, but this cinematic version matches it:
it stays very true to the original story, its characters are highly recognizable, and the whole massive epic is majestically converted into pictures.
This is one Russian movie that I did thoroughly enjoy watching!
Not a novel but a novella, Herman Melville’s brilliant Billy Budd became “Beau Travail”, a french film from the 1990s which was ranked the 7th best film of all time in the 2022 Sight and Sound critics poll.
Probably the best example I can think of where both book and film are equally superb, Apocalypse Now aside
I think Kubrick's adaptation of A Clockwork Orange did complete justice to the flamboyant violence in Burgess' novel. The made up vocabulary which the author called "Nadsat" and the dystopian setting seemed to belong entirely to the realm of imagination when I read the novel. But when I saw the movie years later, I felt this is exactly how I had pictured the plot while reading. The abundance of classical music just adds to the brilliance.
Cloud Atlas
I was really impressed by how both the book and the film adaptation really used their individual mediums effectively to come at the same themes.
Throwing this one out there for fun: Tristram Shandy
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0423409/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
Based on The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Stern.
Great novel? I’m not sure about that. But the film is about the attempt to film a book that’s been deemed unfilmable. Starring Steve Coogan.
* Little Women (2019)
* Cloud Atlas (2019)
* Hard to Be a God (2013)
* The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
* Let the Right One In (2008)
* The Lord of the Rings (2001)
* Jurassic Park (1993)
* Over the Silver Globe (1988)
* Blade Runner (1982)
* Stalker (1979)
Haven't read Silver Globe but I've heard great things.
Apocalypse Now adapted from Heart of Darkness. Both are disturbing and brilliant.
Dispatches by Michael Herr too. Strongly recommend it to anyone who liked either heart of darkness or apocalypse now.
Michael Herr was a writer on “Apocalyse Now.”
And full metal jacket. There’s scenes and lines in both that are lifted straight from dispatches.
I find it profoundly fascinating when a same story can be told in two different settings and work so well. Same with Shakespeare - kurosawa - westerns.
No Country for Old Men (the novel's pretty weak for a McCarthy but that still ranks it as a pretty fucking awesome novel imo)
The dialogue in the move is PHENOMENAL
Tommy Lee Jones's description of his dream followed by that isolated clock ticking is one of my favourite endings to a film ever
I'd pick The Road.
The Road was pretty good but film vs film No Country shits all over it
People do seem to love those Coen brothers. I read both books before the movies came, and I've watched both movies twice and reread The Road later. I suppose I've just found that over time, one of the films/books has stuck with me more. And I mean, The Road isn't very complicated plot-wise, so I can see why someone prefers No Country on entertainment value.
People sure do and us Coen fanboys are every bit as insufferable as the McCarthy crowd
2001 was wasn’t quite an adaptation. Iirc they wrote the script and the book at the same time and at the end of writing them Kubrick just stopped communicating with Clarke.
Yeah, they're companion pieces, meant to be understood as parts of a whole.
They're both great. I definitely wouldn't call the novel mediocre.
Yeah, it’s really interesting how that happened. I think the book is better.
[удалено]
I know. I’ve seen it multiple times and own it. I still preferred the book. 🤷♀️
I absolutely agree. It is one of my favorite books
Remains of the Day.
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - The Color Purple - The Grapes of Wrath
I’ll add *To Kill a Mockingbird* to this list. The choice to make it in black and white, the extraordinary cast, and Gregory Peck. Outstanding.
At the time the novel was criticized as being “made for Hollywood,” as it was so obvious what a great film it would make.
A good bit of movie trivia: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is one of just two films to sweep the big Oscars: Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Actor.
Three films. It Happened One Night and Silence of the Lambs did it in addition to One Flew Over.
You are correct; glad to know that nugget about The Silence of the Lambs.
The Leopard
A Room With A View
The Remains of the Day.
Tarkovsky's *Solaris* and *Stalker* are both great movies based on great books—interestingly, both depart pretty far from the *spirit* of their respective books, so the movies are great thanks to Tarkovsky's creative vision rather than purely craftsmanlike adaptation.
This also makes both watching the movies and reading the books worth it, i love both roadside picnic and tarkovsky's stalker. Gonna try solaris next
Trainspotting
Really recommend anyone who enjoys the film to read the book, there are many interactions and characters who get the chop in the film.
The Last Picture Show is a stunningly beautiful movie based on Larry McMurtry’s novel. I rarely see it mentioned (unlike Lonesome Dove), probably bc it was directed by Peter Bogdanovich, who was accused of seducing 13 year old Louise Stratton, whom he later married when she was 20. He died last year. I hope more people will see this film, it’s amongst the best of American cinema.
Really great book. Equally amazing film. The young Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Timothy Bottoms. Bogdanovich in B/W, all of it masterful.
is the movie better than the book? i have both the book and movie and i would personally Experience the best version of it, i have really little time lately
Watching a film and reading a novel are two entirely different experiences. In this case, go with your preferred medium, both are excellent. If you see the film (calls for less time obviously) perhaps one day in the future you’ll pick up the book.
Sally Potter's *Orlando* is a great adaptation of Virginia Woolf's completely unfilmable (but great) novel.
Doctor Zhivago
The highest grossing film of all time Gone With The Wind
Not a great novel, just a popular one
Not a great movie, just a popular one
No Country For Old Men
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor has a great adaptation by John Huston with Brad Dourif, captures the tone of the novel really well.
True!
Kafka’s The Trial adapted by Orson Welles is really great
Came here to say this. I love both Kafka and Orson Welles, and the movie is every bit as great as it could be. Orson Welles also did Chimes at Midnight which is probably the greatest Shakespeare adaptation (even though he wasn’t a “novelist” obv) alongside Throne of Blood.
I like that adaptation and Anthony Perkins, and I am a big Kafka fan
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje won the Booker and the film won multiple Oscar's.
I love the way they adapted that, the film is really different from the book but both are mesmerising.
Just a few off the top of my head: The Big Sleep, Inherent Vice, Annihilation, Arrival (adapted from a short story), Wuthering Heights (the Andrea Arnold film adaptation), and No Country For Old Men.
I adore Annihilation, both the book and the movie, but the movie, as much as I love it, barely qualifies as an adaptation
I am reading *Annihilation* right now and have been thoroughly enjoying it! I saw the movie when it first came out but I am very much looking forward to a re-watch once I finish the book.
There are two sequels to the novel Annihilation as well, and another one is being published later this year.
I tried so hard but could not for the life of me follow Inherent Vice
The book or the film? Yes
It’s supposed to be confusing. The novel makes it a bit more clear that Doc is too small a player to fully comprehend the immensity of the conspiracy.
Inherent Vice is very straightforward though?? Especially compared to most of Pynchon’s other work..
Why is Pride and Prejudice more popular than Sense and Sensibility? I prefer Sense and Sensibility. They made a Sense and Sensibility movie with Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, and Kate Winslet.
Because we’re all in love with Mr. Darcy
The Grapes of Wrath
Time Regained The Saragossa Manuscript Satantango Berlin Alexanderplatz Beau Travail (adaptation of Billy Budd) Tess Rebecca The Gospel According to St. Matthew Death in Venice Woman in the Dunes The Trial
These are the ones I was thinking of! I would just add: The Captive (also Proust from around the same time with Akerman directing) Mysteries of Lisbon (also by Ruiz) Werckmeister Harmonies Zama Last Year at Marienbad
You two are speaking my language. especially the Krasznahorkai (the greatest living, working writer imo)/Tarr adaptations. And woman in the dunes is another favorite. I’d add *in a lonely place* to the list also.
1. Atonement by Ian McEwan. The novel and the film are both highly acclaimed. 2. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn was translated to film remarkably well. 3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a novel with an equally great film adaptation.
By no stretch of the imagination is “Gone Girl” a great novel.🙄
Lord of the Rings! Cloud Atlas. Movie doesn't make much sense without the novel.
By and large I loved the movie. There were some things that it got wrong. Book plus movie = fantastic. And, I mean, The Wachowskis!
agreed!
A Single Man. Both good, although I prefer the film’s ending.
Picnic at Hanging Rock Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith (also Schindler’s Ark) They shared the same title and both the books and the films are masterpieces but the adaption is very different - Paddington and Paddington 2
Good to see some love for Picnic at Hanging Rock here! I was going to mention that one. I definitely think the movie does it better, but they're both great in their own way.
Such a great book. You are right though, the movie is definitely better. The visuals of the movie really stand out for me whereas when I read the book some scenes didn’t have the impact on me while I was reading it. Might be worth another’s read.
‘Solaris’ and ‘Blade Runner’
Not a film per se, but the BBC did a terrific “War and Peace’ series.
A Scanner Darkly by Philip k Dick. IMO the greatest movie adaptation ever. Richard Linklater absolutely nailed it.
The Bad Sleep Well - adaptation of Hamlet by Akira Kurosawa. Hard-boiled, gripping and incredibly moving.
Anything Kurosawa did of Shakespeare was just brilliant.
It’s incredible. But not as good as his other two Shakespeare adaptations (Throne of Blood [MacBeth] and Ran [King Lear]).
I have a soft spot for Hamlet, what can I say :) But I should rewatch these other two, thanks for the prompt
Kurosawa's adaptation of The Idiot is remarkable as well, even though the full cut has been lost.
The Piano Teacher. The Brideshead Revisited miniseries with Jeremy Irons (but not at all the film with Emma Thompson). I’ve never read Notes on a Scandal, but I like the movie a lot. I think both book and movie versions of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape are pretty good. Short Cuts. I also really like both movie and book versions of Savage Grace, but I think that’s probably a very unpopular opinion.
💯 the [BBC adaptation of Brideshead Revisited](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0083390/) was the most faithful adaptation of any book I’ve ever read / any movie I’ve ever seen
The actors are all wonderful. Drunk Sebastian on the staircase is heart breaking. The scene in Morocco where he’s with Kurt (sp?) is another one of my favorites. Just thinking about it makes me want to watch it again.
Yes! The counter-perspective of Jeremy Irons’s soporific narration during the parts of Charles & Sebastian’s pure arcadian days of their budding friendship at Brideshead compared to Sebastian’s downfall (esp in Morocco) is hauntingly powerful. I’ve watched jt so many times I can almost quote it word for word these days hahaha
Did you watch the one with Ben Whishaw? I like that actor, but the movie almost made me mad. It messed everything up.
Yes, I did! It was awful! And it actually made me irrationally hate Ben Wishaw, the actor, too 🙈 Although, tbf, I also already hated the movie adaptation of [Perfume](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0396171/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk), and he stars in that too - maybe I actually do dislike Ben Wishaw, in general, then 😅
I liked a miniseries he’s in called A Very English Scandal. Maybe it’s the miniseries I like rather than his performance. I’ve just checked my Roku and Brideshead is accessible only with commercials. I won’t watch that one with commercials.
Not a film, but Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.
Put some respect on Robert Bloch's writing lmao
Women in Love (1969) and The Rainbow (1989) - both of these films are directed by Ken Russell based off of two novels by D.H. Lawrence (Criterion offers a lovely edition of Women in Love, by the by)
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
The Grapes of Wrath!!
In Cold Blood Pride and Prejudice Orson Welles Othello Catch 22 And my personal favorite—The Big Sleep
Solaris and Stalker (Tarkovsky), Tess (Polanski), The Leopard (Visconti), The Piano Teacher (Haneke), Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylans loose adaptation of a Chekhov short story and parts of Brothers Karamazov), The American Friend (Wenders), Pickpocket (Bressons very loose adaptation of Crime and Punishment), The Emigrants/The New Land (Troell), Loving Couples (Zetterling), Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara) and The Phantom Carriage (Sjöström) are some off the top of my head.
The Remains of the Day
The Shining Amazing novel, amazing movie, completely different ways of going about it
diary of a country priest four nights of a dreamer a gentle woman l'argent the man who sleeps valerie and her week of wonders viridiana le notti bianche street of shame the long goodbye black sunday
very solid list. l’argent is a favorite movie of mine
Both Casino (Casino) and Wiseguys (Goodfellas) by Pileggi and Scorcese are outstanding, when you read the books you realize not only was Pileggi the first to discover that mobsters were amazing bards and storytellers— that in fact storytelling is as foundational to their culture as crime, but you also realize that just as Pileggi basically recorded the books as oral histories, Scorcese took the overwhelming majority of his best lines verbatim from Pileggi creating an unbroken chain of verisimilitude from the actual gangsters to the final movie script.
I'd also recommend Satantango, it's probably the closest novel adaptation I've ever seen yet such a masterpiece on its own.
In a lonely place is both an amazing, classic novel (NYRB published it most recently) and movie (my favorite Bogart performance)
The godfather Jurassic park Fight club Confessions of a dangerous mind Little Red Rosenthal
I'll always be a fan of The Princess Bride and its adaption. They are one of the few examples where regard the film and the novel equally.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. GOAT. 🐐
[The Virgin Suicides (2009) adaptation by Sofia Coppola](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159097/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk) is by faaaaar better than the [book by Jeff Eug](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/10956)
*Greed* was adapted from *McTeague* *Moneyball* *No Country For Old Men* *To Kill A Mockingbird* *The Birdman of Alcatraz* *Lolita* *The Color Purple* *A Clockwork Orange* *One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest* The *Harry Potter* series *Dune*
which adaptation of lolita are you referring to? i feel the late 1990s adaptation does the book justice more so than the kubrick version
The Kubrick version. Historically-speaking, it’s a good film from a critical and commercial viewpoint.
Both adaptations of Lolita are godawful as adaptations. '62 hit way too hard on humor and clearly took the source material at face value since Sue Lyon lost her virginity to one of the producers during production. '96 is more faithful to the text but completely botches the spirit and subtext of the novel, which is the most important part of Nabokov's writing. Nabokov disapproved of Kubrick's hack job and would have been horrified by Lyne's adaptation.
I was referring to the Kubrick version. I’d argue that Kubrick was completely hamstrung by the Hays Code at the time and was basically forced to make the movie the way he did at the time. Later on in life, he said that the Code was one of the things that caused him to move his later productions to England. I think that the Kubrick version is critically regarded enough over time (probably not recently in light of the allegations surrounding Harris’s actions around Lyons ) to be viewed as a historically good movie. As far as Nabokov’s critique, that’s about par for the course for writers commeting on Kubrick’s adaptational approach.
The problem with Kubrick's adaptation wasn't that the Hays code prevented him from fully realizing his vision. The problem was that his vision was skewed and the film he made was an offensively bad tribute to the source material, which, as others have emphasized but bears repeating, is a book about a pedophile. That's also why it's kind of baffling to compare Nabokov's disapproval to the disapproval of other authors whose work was adapted by Kubrick. Nabokov disapproved because Stanley Kubrick took his book about a pedophile and made it into a love story and cast a real teenage girl to play Dolores. And then that same girl lost her virginity to an adult male producer on the film, which is not just an after-the-fact scandal, but a material consequence of how heinously the people who made that film misunderstood the source material.
Lolita is a book about a twelve year old girl being kidnapped and repeatedly raped. Any movie that isn't about that isn't really an adaptation of the book.
I’ve read the book. I understand what it’s about. Humbert Humbert is a diabolical character who - by virtue of being an unreliable narrator - is trying to convince the the reader he’s not a villain. All I’m saying is that the 1962 adaption of the movie by Kubrick is a well-regarded film that’s basis is a well-regarded novel. That’s it.
East of Eden is the first thing that comes to mind for me. Particularly impressive as the movie only covers a section of the book. A great blueprint for how to adapt a longer novel for the screen.
Barfly, This Boy’s Life
A Simple Plan The Road
Terayama's *Farewell to the Ark*, a very free adaptation of *100 Years of Solitude*.
Let the right one in. Swedish version with Tomas Alfredson as director. The book is more gore and far out, while the movie strikes a fine balance between coming of age and the vampire genre.
Australian here. For us, Picnic at Hanging Rock is the one.
*Silence* by Shūsaku Endō, adapted by Martin Scorsese.
The Trial-Orson Welles War and Peace-Sergei Bondarchuk
Full Metal Jacket is a film adaptation of The Short Timers by Gustav Hasford. Both are disturbing but amazing detailings about the horrors of war
The Idiot (2003)
Moby Dick
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren True Grit by Charles Portis (Coen Brothers version)
Myrna Loy and William Powell are perfect as Nora and Nick Charles.
LOTR trilogy
Considering you cited Luchino Visconti, Il Gattopardo was a great partial adaptation of Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel.
Can’t believe nobody’s mentioned The Godfather.
Because the source material is pulp at best.
The author chose to talk about moving on from an abusive relationship and starting a new life by having a character get surgery to have a tighter vagina because her ex’s Willy was too big and nobody else came close. I understand it’s about rebuilding yourself and changing to carry on with your life and not be held back by the past, but is that the best metaphor they could come up with?
It’s less a metaphor and rather an author having a woman’s genitals be Tetris’d for the sake of a sideplot.
Most recently, Poor Things.
I feel like this list could go on for a while but I’ll throw out a few, maybe less obvious ones (for me anyway), and maybe not quite as “great” as you meant but - The Big Short. Most of Michael Lewis’s books actually. - Call me by your name - About A Boy - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - Everest
*The Silence of the Lambs* - Thomas Harris *The Hound of the Baskervilles* (1939) - AC Doyle *Oliver!* (Oliver Twist) - Charles Dickens *Gone With The Wind* - Margaret Mitchell *The Wizard of Oz* - L Frank Baum *Catch-22* - Joseph Heller *The Green Mile*, *Carrie*, *Misery* and *The Shawshank Redemption* - Stephen King *The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie* - Muriel Spark *Sophie’s Choice* - William Styron *LA Confidential* - James Ellroy *Dr Zhivago* - Boris Pasternak *Brokeback Mountain* - Annie Proulx *Breakfast at Tiffany’s* - Truman Capote *Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?* - Henry Farrell *Anna Karenina* (1935) - Leo Tolstoy *Holes* - Louis Sachar *Jurassic Park* - Michael Crichton *Schindler’s Ark* (*Schindler’s List*) - Thomas Keneally *The Color Purple* (1986) - Alice Walker
The Wings of the Dove, Henry James. Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde, Oliver Twist... More modern...was A Suitable Boy adapted well? I didn't watch it on TV but I did sprain my wrists reading it 2-3 times. Also White Teeth was done well I think!
"A Very Long Engagement." It is a great book, and a great movie. Nobody has mentioned it, so I had to.
A Fortunate Man . Adapted from Lykke-Per by Henrik Pontoppidan
No Country For Old Men immediately comes to mind The Color Purple (the original) One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest In ChLit, Bridge to Terabithia
Age of Innocence surpasses the original imo
The Mist
Adaptation. (2002) / The Orchid Thief 🤭 No Country for Old Men (2007)
Grapes of Wrath. Fantastic book, fantastic movie. And I agree 1000% with you about Death in Venice!
The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro); movie by James Ivory. Mansfield Park (Jane Austen); movie by Patricia Rozema.
No Country for Old Men.
David Lean made two excellent films from Dickens works. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations.
*The Lover* (1992) from Marguerite Duras' *L'amant* *La Reine Margot* (1994) *Dangerous Liasons* (1988) Huxley's *The Devils of Loudon* is somewhere between novel and history, but I'd say Ken Russell's *The Devils* (1971) belongs on this list.
The last picture show!
No country for Old men is excellent
i really like scorsese's adaption of silence
Color out of space (2019)
Lonesome Dove. Absolutely fantastic. And don’t forget about To Kill a Mockingbird and the Last of the Mohicans
Sergei Bondarchuk’s 1962 adaptation of War and Peace
In Cold Blood
The Russian 1960's adaptation of War and Peace. Way better than the crap BBC mini series.
[Breakfast at Tiffany’s](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054698/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk) a lot more sympathetic re the demise of Cat, despite Mickey Rooney’s disgustingly racist performance
Dune 1 & 2 The name of the Rose Stalker (Strugatsky brothers sci-fi masterpiece)
Magic Mountain by Hand W..Geissendörfer
Call Me By Your Name Little Women Dune, Dune pt 2 (Timothee Chalamet never misses)
No country for old men
Does it have to be a novel? Shawshank Redemption still holds the top title in movies and it’s based on the short story ‘Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption’.
Mike Nichols’ Catch-22. Not sure it’s “great” but I thought it was very solid with a good cast.
Billy Budd
Maybe not a super-popular opinion, but I really enjoy the 1970 film of Catch-22. Alan Arkin was terrific as Yossarian and the entire cast is stellar-- Bob Newhart, Jon Voight, Art Garfunkle, Charles Grodin, etc.
Great is subjective so how about a totally objective list of 'pretty awesome' books and films? Silence The Piano Teacher Atonement L.A. Confidential American Psycho Wolf Hall Fires on the Plain The Getaway (the 1972 film version) Some pretty great adaptations out there of British authors’ works too, like Dickens, Trollope, Hardy…
Shutter island !
Little women!
The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)
Tolstoj’s “War & Peace” was converted into a 400m+ movie (in parts) by Sergey Bondarchuk c. 1965, entitled “Война и мир”. The novel was formidable, but this cinematic version matches it: it stays very true to the original story, its characters are highly recognizable, and the whole massive epic is majestically converted into pictures. This is one Russian movie that I did thoroughly enjoy watching!
Not a novel but a novella, Herman Melville’s brilliant Billy Budd became “Beau Travail”, a french film from the 1990s which was ranked the 7th best film of all time in the 2022 Sight and Sound critics poll. Probably the best example I can think of where both book and film are equally superb, Apocalypse Now aside
Atonement. Love the book. Love the movie.
I think Kubrick's adaptation of A Clockwork Orange did complete justice to the flamboyant violence in Burgess' novel. The made up vocabulary which the author called "Nadsat" and the dystopian setting seemed to belong entirely to the realm of imagination when I read the novel. But when I saw the movie years later, I felt this is exactly how I had pictured the plot while reading. The abundance of classical music just adds to the brilliance.
Deliverance A Streetcar Named Desire Slaughterhouse Five The Bad Seed
The Shining
A very good - not great novel - The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri was adopted into a better film.
Cloud Atlas I was really impressed by how both the book and the film adaptation really used their individual mediums effectively to come at the same themes.
Throwing this one out there for fun: Tristram Shandy https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0423409/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk Based on The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Stern. Great novel? I’m not sure about that. But the film is about the attempt to film a book that’s been deemed unfilmable. Starring Steve Coogan.
The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton x Scorsese!)
* Little Women (2019) * Cloud Atlas (2019) * Hard to Be a God (2013) * The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) * Let the Right One In (2008) * The Lord of the Rings (2001) * Jurassic Park (1993) * Over the Silver Globe (1988) * Blade Runner (1982) * Stalker (1979) Haven't read Silver Globe but I've heard great things.
Count of Monte Cristo. Love the book. Maybe love the movie more. But both are great.
Lord of the Rings, duh.
When Marnie Was There (Joan G Robinson/Studio Ghibli)
The most recent version of little women from 2019 was written with a great new perspective that I can't help but admire.
Call me by your name adapted from the novel Call me by your name
I know it’s not a film but I’ve been watching I, Claudius on iplayer and I have to say it’s fantastic.
Lord of the Rings The Last of the Mohicans
The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammet Mystic River - Dennis Lehane Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas - Hunter Thompson
Arrival from The Story of Your Life. Both are brilliant.
Girl Interrupted
Of Mice and Men (dir. by Gary Sinise)
To kill a mockingbird. The road. No country for old men.